MOTOROLA MOBILITY SHAREHOLDERS OVERWHELMING APPROVE GOOGLE ACQUISITION

Motorola Mobility on Thursday announced that stockholders voted to approve Google’s proposed $12.5 billion merger. At the company’s special stockholder meeting on Thursday, roughly 99% of Motorola shares voting cast their vote in favor of the acquisition, which amounts to $40 per share in cash for complete ownership of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. ”We are pleased and gratified by the strong support we have received from our stockholders, with more than 99 percent of the voting shares voting in support of the transaction,” Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Google to realize the significant value this combination will bring to our stockholders and all the new opportunities it will provide our dedicated employees, customers, and partners.”

First announced back in August, Google intends to acquire Motorola Mobility and run it as a separate entity in terms of operations. As Google CEO Larry Page explained, however, patents are also a big part of the deal. Google intends to use the tens of thousands of patents it will control as a result of the merger as a new line of defense in a series of patent battles between its various Android partners and aggressively litigious companies like Apple and Microsoft.

HP BUYS CONTROLLING STAKE IN AUTONOMY

The list of HP acquisitions grows by one today, with the purchase of UK information-software maker Autonomy, long a target of former HP chief Léo Apotheker. Apotheker, you may recall, was just ousted in favor of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. The deal began during Apotheker's tenure and went through with HP paying just about $10.4 billion for a controlling percentage of Autonomy stock. The UK firm will remain a separate unit, with Whitman saying, "Autonomy significantly increases our capabilities to manage and extract meaning from that data to drive insight, foresight and better decision making."

GOOGLE BUYS ZAGAT

Long before Yelp, there was Zagat, a point-based restaurant rating guide, compiled from the best (or worst, depending) crowdsourced reviews. Today, Google has acquired the brand and plans to integrate Zagat's now expanded shopping, eating, drinking and hotel tips into both search and maps. For gastronomes, travelers and locals, that means crowdsourced tips for superb noms and activity recommendations from around the world.

GOOGLE BUYING MOTOROLA MOBILITY

Google has announced it is acquiring handset maker Motorola Mobility for $40 per share or $12.5 billion. Google will making Motorola Mobility a "dedicated Android partner" to "enhance competition in mobile computing" and "supercharge the Android ecosystem." Google CEO Larry Page said "Motorola Mobility's total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers."

The acquisition also give Google access to Motorola Mobility's treasure chest of patents which it can use to help defend itself against lawsuits.

Motorola Mobility has been a strong Android partner to Google and launched the flagship Droid lineup for Verizon. Google will continue to operate its new toy as a separate business and not morph it into an in-house hardware wing.

WAL-MART ADDS MOVIE STREAMING TO WEBSITE

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has added streaming movies to its website as the world's largest retailer attempts to grab a bigger share of the online movie market from rival service Netflix Inc.

The decision to offer movie sales and rentals through Walmart.com comes just two weeks after Netflix raised prices for the majority of its customers. The price hike provoked howls of protest from consumers and disappointing subscriber growth projections, leading to a significant drop in Netflix's stock price.

Wal-Mart, long the nation's leading seller of DVDs, signaled its intent to double down on digital movie distribution in February 2010, when it spent a reported $100 million to acquire Vudu, a Silicon Valley start-up that was gradually being added to home entertainment devices.

Since the acquisition, Vudu has been able to leverage the giant retailer's clout with manufacturers to incorporate is service into more than 300 consumer electronics products, including Internet-connected television sets, Blu-ray disc players and the Sony PlayStation 3 game console.

This spring, Vudu began offering movie rentals and purchases via the Web, through Vudu.com, positioning the service to better compete with the likes of Amazon.com, Apple Inc.'s iTunes or Blockbuster.

Offering 20,000 movie titles for rental and purchase through Wal-Mart's website, which attracts about 40 million monthly visitors, is a further step in that direction. It better positions the retailer to take on established online players, as well as traditional competitors such as Best Buy, which last may bought digital video service CinemaNow.

On Wal-Mart's website, the movies will be available the same day the DVDs go on sale in stores. Rental prices range from 99 cents to $5.99. Digital purchases are priced from $4.99 to $24.99.

AMAZON LAUNCHES MAC DOWNLOAD STORE

Amazon on Thursday announced yet another online application store, this time for Mac OS X users. The Amazon Mac Download Store will compete directly with Apple’s own Mac App Store, and there will be no love lost between these two giants.

There are currently 201 software titles and 51 different games available, including full blown apps like Microsoft Office and Intuit QuickBooks, and hit games such as Dragon Age: Origins. Customers can quickly purchase and download applications using their Amazon accounts, and purchases are automatically backed-up in case you need to reinstall the apps at a later date.

LEAKED: TWITTER BUYS TWEETDECK FOR $50 MILLION

According to source speaking to TechCrunch, Twitter purchased the popular third-party client TweetDeck for between $40 and $50 million on Monday. The Wall Street Journal originally reported that Twitter was in “advanced talks” to purchase TweetDeck – a 15 person company – back in April. Sources speaking to TechCrunch said that Twitter made the purchase in an effort to stop Uber Media, another third party company with a handful of Twitter applications across multiple platforms, from buying TweetDeck first. Neither company has officially announced the acquisition, yet.

LEAK: GOOGLE CHROME NOTEBOOKS COMING IN JUNE/JULY

Neowin has confirmed from a reliable source that the Google Chrome OS based notebooks will be available for "purchase" in late June/early July. The search giant also is planning on using an unconventional form of distribution to customers. Google will be selling the devices as part of a subscription based model with Gmail to customers. It's not clear if this applies to mainstream Gmail.com users, or to Google Apps premier customers.

According to our source, Google plans to make the notebooks available for $10-$20 a month per user, and will provide hardware refreshes as they are released as part of the package, and will replace faulty hardware for the life of the subscription. On top of this, Google will make the devices available for a one time payment as a normal retailer would, but is likely to not distribute the devices directly. Instead, the company will distribute them in a fashion similar to the way Android is distributed.

RUMOR: TWITTER TO PURCHASE TWEETDECK

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Twitter is in “advanced talks” to purchase TweetDeck — the popular desktop and mobile third-party Twitter client. The deal could be worth as much as $50 million, although neither party has commented on the possible acquisition. TweetDeck, based in the U.K, has 15 employees on its payroll. Twitter could use the acquisition to immediately offer a “native” Twitter client in the PC desktop space, especially if it has plans to begin targeting enterprise Twitter users.

GAMESTOP BUYS IMPULSE AND SPAWN LABS, SAYS IT IS BECOMING "TECHNOLOGY COMPANY"

It looks like GameStop's plans following its acquisition of Impulse and Spawn Labs may be even grander than we had suspected. At an investor conference today, GameStop said flat out that it is "becoming a technology company," and that it does indeed plan to introduce a cloud-based gaming service similar to OnLive as a result of the Spawn Labs acquisition, while Impulse will be used to "compete fiercely" with Steam. But that's just the start of things.

According to the Dallas Morning News, GameStop also plans to expand the gaming service to a variety of mobile devices, and it's apparently even entertaining the idea of a GameStop-branded tablet, saying that "if we feel like we could do a better job of making a tablet, we'll do that." Of course, some of that is still quite a ways off, but GameStop will be taking its first steps fairly soon -- it's already showed off a demo of how the service will be integrated into its website (see above, complete with a "try it now" option), and it plans to begin a public beta sometime this year before rolling out the full service early next year.

SKYPE PURCHASES QIK FOR $100 MILLION

Skype has bought QIK for $100 million according to Business Insider. QIK is similar to Skype but for mobile phones and tablets. By buying QIK, Skype will allow users of these devices to video chat in addition to the ability to send and receive video mail. Qik users can also record video with their mobile phone and have it instantly uploaded to the web or, if they choose, video can be viewed as it is recording offering mobile phone users the unique ability to stream live video.

Intel buying McAfee for $7.68 billion

Chip maker Intel has announced they are purchasing security software maker McAfee for $7.68 billion.  The $48/share price is a 60% premium over McAfee's Wednesday closing price of $29.93/share.

Intel, said security is now a fundamental component of online computing, but today's approach to security isn't adequate for the growing availability of internet connections on mobile phones, medical devices, ATMs, automobiles and elsewhere.  The industry needs a new approach that combines software, hardware and services to meet tomorrow's needs.